Jeri Chase Ferris is the author of 11 biographies for children. She writes especially about minority figures and women. Her 2012 picture book, Noah Webster and His Words, won the 2013 Golden Kite Award for Best Nonfiction from the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators. She’s also penned biographies of Biddy Mason, arctic explorer Matthew Henson, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Abigail Adams.

Amanda Gorman, a 22-year-old poet from Los Angeles, gained 2 million Instagram followers in one day after reading her poem “The Hill We Climb” at the presidential inauguration last week, according to BuzzFeed News. Two of her books, neither of which has been published yet, shot to the top of Amazon’s charts.

The Guardians by John Grisham: In his 40th book, Grisham introduces Cullen Post, a lawyer/Episcopal priest who works for Guardian Ministries, a small nonprofit dedicated to freeing inmates wrongly convicted of murder. Post throws himself into his latest project: freeing Quincy Miller, a black man incarcerated for 22 years for a murder he didn’t commit. Post has to find evidence that will convince a judge to overturn the conviction, but his investigation alarms some dangerous people. Fueled by his religious convictions, Post works with a relentless focus.

In 2002 the Harvard Club on 44th Street in Manhattan planned to erect a glass-walled addition to the classic building. Many alums were angry. At one meeting, Lawrence Lader, 82, got so worked up the governing board shut off his mic. He was still a frenzied orator, just as he’d been as a student in the 1930s and a self-described “street fighter” who led the movement to abolish America’s abortion laws in the 1960s.

December

1 Walter E. Williams, 84 / An economics professor at George Mason University and guest host for Rush Limbaugh, he challenged liberal orthodoxies about the best way to improve the economic condition of black Americans.

2 Rafer Johnson, 86 / The first black captain of a U.S. Olympic team, the 1960 decathlon gold medalist became a friend of the Kennedy ­family and helped subdue Bobby ­Kennedy’s assassin in 1968.

Blueberry Man by Christina E. Petrides: This lovely picture book offers a fond remembrance of the author’s granddaddy, a blueberry farmer. He provided blueberries for family, friends, and young blueberry pickers, earning the nickname “Blueberry Man.” The berries’ color spurs memories of Granddaddy’s naval uniform and his stories of adventures at sea. Beautiful watercolor illustrations suggest details of those stories (sharks and palm trees encroach on a warm scene of children listening around the grandfather’s chair).

Year 2020 included the deaths of notable politicians, academics, theologians, athletes, and artists. The pages that follow recognize those whose deaths received much media attention—along with several whose deaths didn’t. We’ve noted when those deaths came primarily because of COVID-19. You’ll notice a different format at the end of the section: COVID-19 didn’t just kill famous people, but took members of our churches and communities who won’t make the perennial lists of celebrity roll calls.